Clifton Edwards

There are numerous best practices to apply towards meeting the learning needs of adult learners, to name a few: • Take an inventory of your students’ prior knowledge and experiences. When instructing students, make efforts to acknowledge students’ experiences and build on what they already know. • Determine why students are motivated to be adult learners. Work with students to meet their personal goals. • Identify your students’ learning styles. Use a variety of teaching techniques that will work with a variety of learning styles. Along with those practices mentioned, we may also sometimes ask the learners who seem to… >>>

Complying with regulations is always necessary. The truth is that most people rely upon experience (either personal or observed from others) when it comes to doing the right thing and making decisions; who really has memorized a hundred or so policies and procedures? Sometimes though we need to speak to an expert about a situation or occurence, because searching through policies and procedures is not productive. It can be helpful to have an advisement specialist or team on campus, capable of providing information and guidance which will assist the employee with making appropriate decisions. Does anyone have such an advising… >>>

Each of us to some extent serves to represent our ourganization. While it is not "fair" prosepective students will form an opinion about our organization based on the words or actions of just one person. Actions speak louder than words, however opinions are more often formed based upon words and most forst enoucnters with students occur over a telephone. Each of us bears the responsibility of being not only representatives, but diplomats to external employees, partners and perspective students. I think it's a good idea for the admissions and financial aid operations to be seperate from one another. I wonder… >>>

I think that the issue of transparency begins at the admissions office, when prospective students first meet with an admissions representative. There should not be anything to hide from perspective students. Mistakes can be made however, under time and resource constraints, perspective students could be inadvertently misinformed or necessary information unintentionally witheld. Therefore, a checklist or roadmap could be developed which will help to make certain that only accurate and necessary information was provided to the perspectuve students and at the appropriate times. When mistakes are made, there should be a process to identify the mistake early on and apply… >>>

Transparency in academic administrative, admission and business processes is extremely important. Students who feel as though they were mislead, misinformed, or did not receive all of the necessary information to help them make informed decisions, are likely to become disgruntled, and may partake in activities which could discredit the school. Probably most of us have heard a student or two complain about being confused during their admission process, and as a result made decisions which they would like to reverse. Well, transparency should include obtaining the feedback and opinions from those students, and applying that as part of a review… >>>

Student feedback is important to me, and assessments are one way to obtain that feedback. I think that with assessments, students are provided the opportunity to relate their thoughts and opinions about the course material and delivery methods. Importantly however, the learning assessment questions must lead to answers which are measurable, and the questions should be correlated with objectives and goals outlined for the course. An assessment should allow a brief "non-measurable" comment for the students, to express generalized likes or dislikes about the course. Student likes and dislikes should not weight too heavily on the instructor; there remains the… >>>

Upon determining the student's individual learning styles, the instructor can either cater to the learning styles of the students or assist the students with developing additional learning styles. FOr instance, students who prefer to read, should also become adept at outlining, report writing, making flash cards, etc. During the last course I instructed, I made it a point to include outlining for almost every chapter covered. Many of the students objected at first, however was not surprised when students began relating to me that outlining helped them organize information and structur imformation better, and of course the outlining made studying… >>>

ED102 explains that the instructor has some responsibility for motivating students; no argument there. Morale however is almost as important as motivation, and morale is what the instructor perhaps has more influence over. Motivation is often influenced by factors, consequences, outcomes and threat or reward, many of which the students arrived in the classroom with. Morale is often a result of environment. The instructor I believe has more control over the moral in the classroom than motivational factors, and therefore should take steps to ensure morale is prevelant in the learning environment. Cultivating morale in the learning environment contributes to… >>>